Dear God

Dear God,

I know.  I have never been a favorite.

I don't feel compelled to write you love songs or poems.  I don't always pray before meals, and sometimes when I do, I am just rushing through to get to my burrito.  I am not in awe of you when I view nature.  I don't feel close to you on a mountaintop.

I've always been selfish.  I've always been self-focused; stuck in my own little world of me and my problems. 

I have done little things of which I am not proud.  I have done big things of which I am ashamed.

I don't think I can honestly say that I have ever lived by JOY.  You know, that Sunday School mantra?  Jesus, Others, You?  I probably live it in reverse, every day.

You tolerate my begging, and my constant prayers and worries about what other people think of me.  You hear my whining about how I am not social enough and how dumb I feel when I dress in the wrong clothes....

I am not part of a charity organization and I don't help feed the homeless on Thanksgiving.  I don't always put money in the offering plate. 

I feel disgusted and rageful and angry that you say you love us, but allow people to be raped and mutilated and ravaged by disease and die in tragic accidents.  Tough love?  Disgustingly tough. 

See, I am critical.  I see the negative first and have to dig for the positive.

I can be mean-spirited and feel superior.  I can be neurotic and feel inferior.  I mutter things under my breath that should never be uttered.  I say things outloud which hurt people deeply.

I scream at my children and watch them cry.

I am a slob.

So I suppose I expect pain.  I expect consequences.  I expect imperfection.    I expect to be hurt and feel depressed and miserable at times.

But Andrew? 

He's only two.  He still occasionally confuses his name with his age.  He wants to learn!  He wants to play and run and be crazy.  He wants to learn his letters and sounds and read books and practice coloring inside the lines. He wants to make upper case O's.

He wants to jump and play and wrestle and flip on trampolines and eat sour gummy bears and scream down slides and grow up.

Please dear God.

Look down on your sweet boy and show him mercy. Save him from a life of hospitals and pain.  Heal him physically and emotionally.

And despite my many issues, of which you are quite aware, please grant me your grace and bless me with his presence in my life. Allow me to watch him grow up.  Mold him into a beautiful, kind, caring man.  Let him have fun and pleasure and joy in his life.  Give him a heart of compassion and empathy.

Who knows...maybe someday he will run that soup kitchen on Christmas or build those houses in Guatemala or charter schools in Uganda.  Or maybe he will just bless everyone he meets with his kind smile.  Maybe he will give thanks before each and every meal because he wants to and means it.  Maybe he won't.

Give him a chance.  Please dear Jesus.  Let him live.